1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to scanner technology, and more particularly, to a method and user interface for performing an automatic scan operation for a scanner coupled to a computer system, which allows the user to acquire scanned images in a more user-friendly manner.
2. Description of Related Art
A scanner allows a user to convert the printed matter on a document into a digital image for further processing by a computer. In the use of a scanner, however, it requires highly-experienced users to do the image processing tasks properly. For inexperienced users, it usually requires a long period to learn, typically in a trial-and-error manner, which would make the training quite cost-ineffective since additional electricity and paper cost may be required.
The U.S. Pat. No. 4,837,635 discloses a method that allows the user to first obtain a primitive scanned image from the scanner, and then specify suited image processing settings such as size and scan area for the scanner to perform a second scan operation on the original document to thereby obtain a final scanned image. By this method, the final scanned image is close in image qualities to the original document. One drawback to this patent, however, is that it is quite laborious to use due to the reason that it requires the user to specify the settings. Moreover, it is still insufficient in functionality to meet user demands in high-end image processing.
In the use of many conventional image scan programs, it requires the user to specify various image processing settings to the scan operation. To specify these settings properly, however, the user is required to have learned knowledge background in the science of image processing. Therefore, for unlearned and inexperienced users, it would be highly difficult for them to specify these settings properly, which would make the use of the scanner very user-unfriendly.
In summary, conventional user interfaces for scanner operation have the following drawbacks.
First, they require the user to have learned knowledge background in the science of image processing in order to properly specify the image processing settings, which makes the use of the scanner quite difficult and user-unfriendly.
Second. if a user has no such knowledge background, the user needs to spend much time to learn the image scan operation, typically in a trial-and-error manner, which would make the use of the scanner quite cost-ineffective.
Third, the U.S. Pat. No. 4,837,635 provides only limited functionality to the image processing, which would not meet user demands in high-end image processing.